


The Day Bill Cipher entered Steven Universe's Mind

by OakwoodOuroboros



Category: Gravity Falls, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25933705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OakwoodOuroboros/pseuds/OakwoodOuroboros
Summary: Bill had been waiting. For five years, he had been waiting for his revenge. And now it had come to him, in the form of a hybrid, a creature that he had barely even heard of until this day...
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	The Day Bill Cipher entered Steven Universe's Mind

Steven didn't know what he was doing on the other side of the continent, but one thing was sure, things really are calmer here than on the East coast. Whilst Beach City was alive with Gem-related activity, things here were... quiet. Even the video calls he had with the Gems were somehow muted and fuzzy, as much in his mind as on his phone, and things just didn't feel the same. Even the ocean was different, somehow.

"It shouldn't be surprising, considering it's not the same..." he hummed, the rythm of a tune somehow worming its way past his lips at the same rate at which the words did. A pesky habit, but surely not as bad as the one that immediately landed him and the Dondai in a ditch a couple of seconds later.

After he had chased away the initial surprise, Steven managed to reconstruct what had happened in the few seconds that had passed. A squirrel had unexpectedly darted across the road, and of course he had swerved, and of course he had bubbled himself in such a way that he could not access the steering wheel.

The young man pulled himself out of the car, obviously unhurt, and decided to pull the car out of the ditch. Pushing it would have been more efficient, he managed to tell himself just as the metal bumper creaked and detached in his hands; the car, now unsupported, rolled right back into the groove it had made in the soft sandy earth.

Steven groaned, but his anger remained lidded. There were things that were worth getting angry over, and this was just bad luck. Nothing that anger could solve. Still, he needed a breather.

To his left, an endless beach spread its golden sands, turned blue under the light of the moon. On his right, a dark and foreboding forest loomed. Steven knew this scenery pretty well, considering he had been driving across this same coast for the last few days, but he had only been able to see things from the same viewpoint. Feeling encouraged by the sound of the waves, he turned to the ocean.

He looked left and right, and behind him just to make sure; there was no one around, maybe he could afford himself a midnight swim?

He shrugged out of his clothes and shoes, leaving everything neat and tidy in the car, and a small note on the windshield: _Gone swimming_. Better safe than sorry in case somebody was to come along and worry about the car in the ditch. It was short and polite, in true Beach City fashion. Steven hesitated before lifting his windshield wiper however: on his way here, he had encountered quite a few more unkind souls than the ones that resided in Beach City, and thus now had problems trusting potential strangers that he could possibly come across. After reflection though, he decided to leave it at that, and in the neat handwriting that he had unknowingly inherited from his mother, he signed his name and let himself pad away towards the blond sands.

The night was calm, and there wasn't much to be said of the waves that crashed over and over onto the shore. Indeed, the young man had known them for years, and now that he reconsidered, things weren't that different. He just had to close his eyes, ignore the slightly coarser grain of the sand under his feet, and he was back in Beach City. It was one of his nightly walks that he favored, when the insomnia kicked in. If he replaced the smell of pine with the one of the fry shop, he managed to bring himself back to the place that he longed for. It was true that he had not been that long on the road, maybe one, two years?

That didn't matter now though. Although he was homesick, the thought of going back to the Gems was, without pun, alien to him. He had barely explored one country for now, what else was there to do apart from that?

His reverie was broken by the distant sound of a fight. Immediately, his battle-ready body snapped awake, and he listened even more intensely.

The sound was faint, but it was certainly there. Men, definitely, not Gems nor monsters, were fighting somewhere on the sea. He didn't know how, but soon Steven was sprinting towards the shore. The voices echoed over the water, but Steven couldn't see anything that could be of note; the night was too dark.

After a brief moment of hesitation, Steven dipped his toes into the water, wincing at the cold, and in nothing but his boxers began wading until he could no more. Then, he started swimming with powerful strokes, token of years of training and his natural super-strength.

The voices were getting closer, and before he knew it the outline of a boat popped out of the dark of the night. Now, Steven could clearly see two figures, one wrestling the other and clearly winning.

"Ford, I swear to-"

Before the man could complete his sentence, Steven hoisted himself out of the water onto the boat, dripping water all over the wooden boat's deck. The ship had clearly lived a long and full life, for as soon as the young man took a step forward, he received a splinter in his foot.

He didn't even have time to wince before a blue light illuminated the night. Both men had stopped fighting, and were now brandishing weapons. One, the origin of the blue light and visibly the most dangerous of the two, had some sort of death laser from outer space pointed towards Steven, and the other had glinting knuckledusters on both his fists. In the light of the laser gun, Steven could now see that both of the men were old, way older than his own dad. Maybe even older than Uncle Grandpa. Their faces were strewn with wrinkles and weathered, but they somehow still retained their hair, despite their age.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" demanded the man with the gun.

"I'm, uh, Steven? Steven Universe? And I'm out here because I was on the beach, then I heard you arguing, and..."

"A likely story!" Exclaimed the other man. He took a step closer, and Steven prepared to raise his shield. Surely, this person couldn't really do him much harm with brute force, but he did fear the unknown weapon of the other person. He had a bad experience with lasers, after all.

"I'm telling the truth!" Steven insisted, even though he knew that humans were stubborn, he could always try. As usual, Beach City hope continued to live on in him.

Now that he had heard the voices of both the men, he could tell there was a relation between both of them. he looked at their faces again, keeping his hands raised so as not to alarm them, and studied them. They did look similar: they had the same nose, the same eyes, and nearly the same glasses and the same cracks in them.

“Are you twins, by any chance?”

They looked at each other, and immediately the one with the knuckledusters said: “He’s no family to me.”

“Oh, come on Stanley! We’re not going to go over this again!”

“Yes we are!”

Steven watched as one of the men lifted his fists towards the other. Things were taking a turn that the young man had not really predicted, but that was going to help him out nevertheless. His universally-known, literally, problem-solving skills were up and ready for this challenge.

“Maybe we should… talk?” he suggested.

“No!” They answered in chorus, then turned to look at each other once more.

“Stanley…”

“Stanford…”

“He sounds exactly like Mabel. You’re right, I do miss her.”

“I told you Stanley, but you just wouldn’t listen!”

The man named Stanley was visibly unhappy at this affirmation, and opened his mouth to shout something unsanitary at his brother, but Steven was quick to the see the mounting fury in the man and interrupted him before he could say anything he might regret later.

"Well, I'm sure this Mabel person could do with a visit from her... grandfathers?" Steven tried.

"Grunkles," they answered in unison once more.

"Grunkles, yes, of course, whatever that is," Steven answered, not condescendingly, but somewhat under his breath. "Anyway, I'm sure she wants to see you. Maybe it's better to bring this boat to wherever she lives and visit her?" suggested Steven.

The Grunkles looked at each other and then turned around to have their own private conversation. the one named Stanford made sure, however, to point his gun at Steven, showing him that he was still held at gunpoint no matter the change in the situation.

They remained whispering agressively for a few minutes, while Steven wondered why he was so intent on solving other people's problems. He would have rolled his eyes at himself if he could. Soon, the two old men had made up their minds, although neither of them were happy about it.

"We can't get to the twins by sea, so we need your... help," admitted Stanley, as if the words burned to say. "We're not paying you, by the way," he added.

 _Not that I was expecting to be_ , thought Steven, but he kept his mouth shut.

"So what do you expect me to do?" he asked, weary of his fate already.

"Well, we need to get to Gravity Falls. It's nearly the end of the summer, but Dipper and Mabel should still be there. Our goal is to get there before they leave for college."

"Sounds like a plan. Where do I come in?"

"Well, we decided to threaten you to bring us there," deadpanned Ford. "I don't think you understand how important these kids are to us."

"And what if I refuse? I have other things to do, you know, and I doubt you'll shoot me."

"We'll just find someone else to threaten to bring us there," answered Stanford.

Again, Steven would have rolled his eyes if the situation allowed. It was true that he had nothing better to do, and he could probably resist them without consequence, but really, he preferred to be the one to bring them to wherever they wanted to go.

"Oh, well, you've got me," Steven said in a monotone, raising his hands and eyebrows. "Where is Gravity Falls? I've got a car, but it needs repairs."

"We've got no idea where we are," Stanley answered.

"Swell, let's get back to the shore then," Steven answered.

The boat was old and rickety, but the unwashed old men knew it well, obviously, and beached it with minimum damage.

Seeing the note he had left on his car, Stanley commented: "Well, you're not the only one who has gone swimming, by the looks of things."

"Shut it, Stanley," Stanford snapped, and immediately he was brought back to his grumpy self.

Stanford repaired the car in a giffy, and Steven looked up the place named Gravity Falls. It was a hundred or so miles away from where they were.

"What about the boat?" Steven asked Stanley, who stayed near the car while his brother went back to said boat to do... something that Steven couldn't see from here.

"The Stan-o'-War? She'll be fine, she just needs a few spells to keep away crabs and folks and she'll be fine. I know how to do them but Sixer never trusts me to."

Steven didn't really understand what the man meant, and was intrigued to ask further, but before he could Stanford was back by their side, and so was his threatening, anormal gun.

"That's done, let's get going," he snapped, and before they knew it Steven was back in the car with both men cramped up in the back, their wide shoulders somehow fitting in the Dondai, and they were back on the road as if nothing had happened.

The silence was a little heavy on Steven, as well as the... scent of both unwashed old men. Sweating a little, the younger man opened the window discreetly, trying to get the smell to leave somehow. In the rear-view mirror, Steven could see Stanley's hair move somewhat comically, showing the baldness that had only just started to eat away at his head, growing his forehead a little beyond what was comfortable, but nothing near Greg Universe's own experience.

This was going to be a long trip, especially since no one was talking.

Suddenly, Stanley piped up: "So, what's with the bedazzled belly button?"

Yes, indeed, this was going to be a long trip.


End file.
